Meydan Free Zone Licence Cost: What You Pay in Year One and Year Two

The advertised Meydan Free Zone licence cost is AED 12,500, licence only, with no visa. A one-person company that actually needs a residence visa pays between AED 24,000 and AED 28,000 in its first year. Year two costs less, but it carries a line nobody quotes you at the start: the audit.

Neither number is a secret and neither is a trick. They are two different products. Both are priced below, line by line, so you can read any Meydan quote and see exactly what has been left out of it.

Meydan Free Zone licence cost at a glance

Licence, Fawri, allocation, activity and workspace figures are read from Meydan’s published product material on 22 September 2026. The establishment card, the year-one bands and the year-two band are practitioner figures from our own completed files, not quoted prices. All of them move, so treat them as a budget, not a rate card.

If you have not settled the bigger question yet, free zone or mainland in Dubai comes first, and setting up in a UAE free zone covers the route in general terms.

Is a licence this cheap a real licence?

This is the question behind almost every enquiry we get on Meydan pricing, so it goes first.

The worry is rarely whether the zone exists. It is whether a licence at this price is a real licence, and whether a bank will take it. A founder sees AED 12,500 in an advert, which is the licence only with no visa, prices three other Dubai zones at three or four times that, and concludes that either the number is a hook or the licence is second class.

Both worries are half right.

The number is a hook in one narrow sense. It is licence only, and nobody trades on a licence alone. You cannot hire, you cannot sponsor yourself, and you cannot get an Emirates ID on it. The next two sections set out what has to be added.

The licence itself is not second class. Meydan Free Zone is a Dubai government free zone established under Ruler’s Decree No. 5 of 2009, and the free zone licence it issues carries the same 100% foreign ownership and the same corporate tax position as a licence from any other Dubai free zone. The entity is a free zone LLC and the suffix on the certificate reads L.L.C-FZ.

Where the second-class fear does bite is banking, and it bites for reasons that have nothing to do with price. A thin activity description and a flexi-desk address slow a bank file down. The zone name is the smallest variable in it. Opening a business bank account in Dubai sets out what a strong file looks like.

What is on the licence, and what is not on it yet

The entry product is the Standard licence at AED 12,500, licence only with no visa. For that you get three things:

•  the free zone LLC trade licence itself
• three activity groups, drawn from a list of more than 2,500 activities
• a flexi-desk lease agreement, which is your registered address

That is a complete, valid company. It is also a company with no immigration file attached to it.

Four things are not included, and all four are needed before a single person can live in the UAE on the strength of that licence:

• the immigration establishment card, which is what makes the company an employer
• e-channel registration, which is how visa applications are filed
• a visa allocation against your flexi desk
• the visa itself, plus the medical and the Emirates ID

The zero-visa licence is a genuine product, not a bait price. It is just a narrow one. Fewer than one in five of the Meydan files we open are genuinely zero-visa at incorporation, and in order of how often we see them they are:

1. an existing owner opening a second company, already on the first company’s visa
2. a spouse-sponsored resident, most often a founder whose partner is employed here
3. someone employed elsewhere in the UAE, setting up without an NOC
4. a property visa holder

The common thread is that all four already hold UAE residence. Nobody outside the country buys a zero-visa licence on purpose. When it happens, it is because the comparison was run on the licence line and the buyer did not know the visa was a separate purchase. That share is our own observation across the files we hold rather than a figure from a system.

There is one clean way to see why the advertised price can exclude so much and still be accurate. The immigration establishment card is opened against the immigration file that a visa allocation creates. A zero-visa company never opens one, so it never pays for it. The same is true of the allocation, the visa, the medical and the Emirates ID. That single fact explains the entire distance between the licence line and the real first year.

The visa line that is not the visa

This is where most Meydan quotes are misread, and it is worth slowing down for.

You will see Meydan packages advertised as a ladder: a licence with no visa, then a licence with one visa, then two, then three. Each step up costs AED 1,850 more than the last. That AED 1,850 is the visa allocation. It is not the visa.

An allocation is permission to apply for one residence visa against your workspace. Buying it does not start an application, does not buy an entry permit and does not put anybody in the country. When you actually run the visa, you pay again:

So a “licence with one visa” priced one allocation step above the licence is exactly that: a licence plus one allocation. Putting the person it is meant for into the country costs another AED 8,250 to AED 9,250 on top, being the establishment card, the visa itself and the medical with the Emirates ID. The immigration establishment card is the line most often missing from published breakdowns altogether, and it is the one people are most surprised by, because it is charged once per company rather than per person.

The flexi desk carries up to six allocations. They are bought one at a time as you need them, not granted up front, and the ceiling belongs to the desk rather than to the package you chose. What a flexi desk gives you in Dubai explains the instrument, and the allocation side in full detail is Meydan visa cost and quota.

How much share capital does a Meydan company need?

None. Meydan sets no minimum share capital and no paid-up capital requirement for a free zone LLC.

You will find AED 100,000 published as a minimum on several Meydan pages. It is not one. That is the conventional nominal figure the zone suggests, and the zone’s own position is that it will not specify a capital figure for you. Anyone publishing it as a minimum has turned a suggestion into a rule.

The number that actually binds is a different one, and it is not a licensing cost at all:

AED 50,000 of declared share capital per shareholder is the threshold for an investor or partner visa. Below that, the shareholder takes an employee visa instead. There is no capital threshold on an employee visa at all.

So capital at Meydan is a visa eligibility condition, not a fee. It touches your money only at the point where a shareholder wants to sit on the licence as an investor rather than as an employee.

Three things follow, and they are worth more than the number itself.

• Declared, not deposited. Nothing is paid in registration. No bank letter is produced at licensing and no funds are blocked. The figure is recorded in the memorandum of association and on the share certificate, both issued in your incorporation pack. A bank will read the declared capital at account opening as a sanity check against your stated activity rather than as a deposit test, so a company declaring AED 10,000 against a general trading activity invites a question. That is a banking friction, not a Meydan fee.
• It changes no fee. Declaring AED 50,000 and declaring AED 500,000 cost exactly the same at licensing, at renewal and on every visa line. This is a genuine difference from a mainland file in some emirates, where documentation is priced off the capital band and a higher declaration costs real money. At Meydan the figure is free to set.
• Free to set high, expensive to correct. Declaring AED 100,000 on day one costs nothing and covers two shareholders at the AED 50,000 investor-visa threshold without any later change. Declare AED 50,000 with one shareholder today, then add a second shareholder next year who wants an investor visa, and the capital has to be amended. That means a fee, a re-issued memorandum and a re-issued share certificate.

The question people arrive with is how much capital they need for Meydan. The honest answer is none, unless you want an investor visa, and then AED 50,000 of it declared in your name. If share capital is a bigger question for you than that, our DMCC share capital page works through a zone that does set a figure.

Add one investor visa and the file looks like this

Here is the same company again, this time as a working business with its founder resident in the UAE. One shareholder, one investor visa, standard licence, applicant already inside the country on a visit or tourist entry.

That subtotal is what reaches the zone and the government. Add consultancy and PRO handling and a first year lands between AED 24,000 and AED 28,000 across our completed Meydan files.

Two numbers rather than one, because the gap between them is the only part of your quote that is negotiable. The government lines are fixed and identical wherever you buy. Everything above them is service.

Counter-intuitively, an applicant already inside the UAE sits at the upper end of that band rather than the lower. The reason is the change of status, which converts a visit or tourist entry into a residence application without leaving the country. It is charged per person and it is a separate line. An applicant outside the UAE takes an entry permit instead, avoids that line and lands nearer the floor, but pays for a flight this page cannot quote for you. Documents needing attestation push either case higher.

One real shape, from our own book. A two-shareholder management consultancy took a free zone LLC at Meydan. Licence and establishment card were done inside a week. One investor visa and one employee visa were drawn against the flexi-desk allocation in the first year. The bank account opened on the second application, after the first was declined on a thin activity description. That last detail costs nothing to avoid and it is the one people learn late.

The residence visa itself runs two years at Meydan, for investors and employees alike. That matters more than it sounds, and the next section is why.

What does year two cost at Meydan Free Zone?

Year two on the same company, with no visa falling due, runs AED 16,700 to AED 21,000.

The formation costs do not repeat. The establishment card and the visa are not due. So the reason year two is not simply the licence renewal on its own is the bottom half of that table, and that half is the part almost nobody is quoted at incorporation.

Committing to a multi-year licence takes up to 15% off the licence line. It does not touch the audit or the tax filing, so the saving across the whole year is smaller than the percentage suggests.

The audit is the line nobody budgets for

Meydan requires audited financial statements as a condition of renewal, and the renewal does not complete without them. In practice the zone asks every licensee, not only companies claiming a tax benefit. Treat it as universal.

Two separate obligations run in parallel here, and they are confused constantly.

Federally, under Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025, audited statements are mandatory where revenue passes AED 50 million in the tax period, or where the company claims Qualifying Free Zone Person status. That status has no revenue floor at all, so a QFZP claimant turning over AED 200,000 still needs them. Statements and the corporate tax return go to the Federal Tax Authority within nine months of financial year end, and late filing runs AED 500 a month for the first twelve months, then AED 1,000 a month. The two-tier financial statement rule that took effect on 30 September 2025 sits alongside this.

At zone level, Meydan simply asks at renewal. A small consultancy that assumed it was exempt because it earns nothing near AED 50 million is exactly the file that arrives at renewal with nothing to submit.

The deadline that governs you is the licence anniversary, not your financial year end. A December year end with an August renewal means the audit has to be finished by roughly June. Free zone auditors book out in the quarter before the common renewal months, so a founder who starts looking in July has already lost.

That AED 3,000 to 6,000 is the auditor’s fee and nothing else. There is no zone-side charge for submitting the statements: Meydan requires them to renew, it does not bill you to receive them. The corporate tax return is the separate line beneath it, because a filing is not an audit and it is often a different provider.

What moves the band is the state of your books, not the size of your company. Clean books audited on time sit at the bottom of it. A year reconstructed from bank statements in month eleven sits at AED 6,000 and sometimes above, and when it goes above, it is scope that did it rather than the rate. Opening the books on day one and reconciling monthly costs nothing at incorporation. Bookkeeping, audited financial statements and corporate tax registration are the three habits that keep year two at the lower figure, and a statutory audit explains what the auditor is actually signing.

If the statements are not filed, the renewal is held. The licence lapses, and the visas attached to it follow it down. That is not a fine. It is a stopped business.

Year three, when the visas come round again

Because Meydan residence visas run two years, your first visa renewal lands in year three, not year two. Budget roughly AED 5,500 to AED 6,500 per person in that year: around AED 2,000 for the establishment card renewal, plus AED 3,500 to AED 4,500 for the medical, the Emirates ID and the stamping.

Planned across three years on a one-visa file, the shape is a heavy first year, a light second year, and a third year in between. Anyone budgeting on a single annual figure will be wrong in two years out of three. The renewal mechanics in full are in Meydan licence renewal cost and timing, and trade licence renewalcovers the general process.

Standard licence or Fawri: what the faster route costs

Meydan sells two routes to the same licence.

The Standard licence starts at AED 12,500, licence only with no visa. It opens the full activity list of more than 2,500 entries and it takes any structure the zone offers, including multiple shareholders, corporate shareholders and a branch.

Fawri starts at AED 15,000, licence only with no visa, and issues in under 60 minutes. It draws on a narrower list of around 1,800 activities and includes one free amendment in the first year. It only works under four conditions, and all four have to hold:

• one shareholder, who is also the manager, director and beneficial owner
• no external approval needed on the activity
• a clean passport scan
• payment already cleared

Break any one of them and it is not Fawri. A branch cannot take this route, and neither can a company with a corporate parent.

The difference is roughly AED 2,500 for speed you may not need, because a Standard licence issues same day to three working days anyway. What the extra buys is certainty on the day, and it only makes sense for a solo founder with nothing complicated in the structure. Whichever route you take, that clock covers the licence document and nothing behind it: the establishment card, the visa, the Emirates ID and the bank account all run afterwards, and licence to fully operational is realistically four to seven weeks.

Four things push a Meydan quote up

Everything in the tables above assumes the simplest possible file. Four things move it, and each one is worth knowing before you sign rather than after.

Activities beyond the three groups

The licence carries three activity groups, not three activities, and a group holds a set of related activities. Three groups covers more ground than the number suggests. Anything beyond them costs AED 1,000 each.

The expensive mistake is not the fee. It is picking three groups defensively, spreading them across unrelated sectors to cover everything, and then finding the activity you actually invoice under sits in none of them. The trade licence amendment is cheap. The month lost while a client’s procurement team rejects an invoice that does not match your licence is not. Choosing your business activity is worth doing properly once.

A corporate shareholder in the structure

A company can hold shares in a Meydan entity, and plenty do. But the parent’s documents need legalisation and attestation from the country of origin, through the UAE embassy there and the foreign ministry here. That adds two to four weeks and real cost, and it takes you off the fast route entirely.

Anyone searching for a 60-minute licence with a foreign parent company should know this before they pay for Fawri.

Coming off the flexi desk

The flexi desk is included, so workspace costs nothing until you outgrow it. Three things force the upgrade: a seventh person, an activity that needs a physical inspection or a regulator’s site visit, or a bank or counterparty that wants to see a dedicated space.

On an annual basis the ladder reads cleanly:

Meydan also publishes a dedicated desk at AED 3,500 a month. Ignore it for annual planning. Twelve months of it comes to more than a private office, which tells you it is a short-term product rather than a step on this ladder.

So the first real workspace step is AED 15,000 a year, slightly more than the licence rather than a multiple of it. That is a smaller jump than most founders brace for, and it is the reason the six-visa ceiling is rarely the thing that ends a Meydan file.

When clients do hit that ceiling, they take the upgrade. They do not change zone. Moving means a new licence, a new establishment card, a new immigration file and every live visa re-stamped, plus cancelling the old entity, which Meydan will not do while visas are live. On every file we have handled, the move costs more than the office step.

Invoicing a Dubai mainland customer

There is no Meydan dual licence with the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, and there cannot be one on a flexi desk, because that route needs a genuine physical office inside the zone.

What exists is the Free Zone Mainland Operating Permit, live since October 2025. It costs AED 5,000 in total, a zone NOC at AED 2,500 and the permit itself at AED 2,500, and takes one to two working days. A full mainland branch is the other route, from AED 10,000 plus premises, in two to four weeks.

Before you buy either, check that you need it. Most business customers accept a free zone invoice without difficulty, and founders regularly take the permit because one accounts clerk asked a question nobody escalated. Take it when the customer is a Dubai government entity, a retail consumer, or a corporate whose procurement policy insists on a mainland licence.

There is a tax consequence that gets missed. Revenue from a UAE mainland customer is non-qualifying income. It spends your de minimis allowance, which is the lower of 5% of total revenue or AED 5 million. Breach it and Qualifying Free Zone Person status is lost for that tax period and the four that follow, with 9% applying to all taxable income rather than just the mainland slice. So the permit costs AED 5,000 and carries a revenue ceiling, and that ceiling belongs in a spreadsheet before the first mainland order, not after.

One thing that does not change the number, despite what people expect: VAT treatment. Meydan does not appear on the designated zone list made under Cabinet Decision No. 59 of 2017 (as amended), so a Meydan company is treated as onshore for VAT. That has real consequences for anyone moving physical goods, and none at all for a services business. The detail is in is Meydan a designated zone [future internal link: Row 79, publish TBC].

Why two quotes for the same company do not match

You can send identical requirements to three Meydan partners and get three different totals. That is not evidence that someone is overcharging. It is how the zone is sold.

We should say where we stand before explaining it. Best Solution is a registered Meydan Free Zone channel partner with more than 60 Meydan licences on its books, so the arithmetic below prices our own service layer as readily as anyone else’s.

Most Meydan buyers reach the zone through a registered channel partner rather than walking in, and partners quote all-in packages with different service layers bundled inside them. One quote includes PRO handling and the visa run. Another prices the licence alone and charges the rest later. A third bundles bookkeeping or a bank introduction.

The licence fee itself is the zone’s fee. It is the same number whether you walk in directly or come through a partner. What a partner changes is the service layer, the sequencing, and how fast a rejected document gets fixed. No partner is selling the licence below the zone’s price, and any quote implying otherwise has moved the difference somewhere you have not read yet.

Which gives you a straightforward way to compare. Strip every quote back to the government and zone lines in the tables above, and whatever is left is the service layer.

You can size that layer before you read a single quote. Government lines on a one-visa file run AED 22,600 to AED 23,600. All in, the same file runs AED 24,000 to AED 28,000. So the service layer is roughly AED 2,000 to AED 5,000, and a number far outside that is worth a question in either direction.

Then ask what the service fee actually includes, in this order:

1. Is the establishment card in it, or does it appear later?
2. Are the visa, the medical and the Emirates ID in it, or only the allocation?
3. Is the change of status in it, if you are applying from inside the UAE?
4. Is the first audit in it, or does it land in month eleven?
5. Which of the three activity groups have been chosen, and do they match what you will invoice?

A quote that is silent on any of those is not a lower price. It is a shorter list.

One line gets paid twice more often than any other, and it is the visa allocation at AED 1,850. The allocation attaches to the facility and is paid once per slot, for the life of that slot. On a file that moves between providers, or where a founder started alone and then handed over, the new provider quotes it again because their template assumes a new file. Check the licence for slots already bought before you pay for them a second time. The next two most common are the establishment card quoted at first-issue price on a company whose card is live and only needs renewing, and the trade name quoted again where the founder already reserved and paid for it.

On payment: Meydan prices the licence as a single up-front payment. Where staged payment exists in this market it comes from the provider splitting their own service fee, with the government lines still clearing in full on day one, or from a buyer’s own card issuer offering an instalment plan. Both change your cash flow. Neither changes the price.

The partner model itself, and what to ask before you pick one, is Meydan’s channel partner model.

Three questions to answer before you compare a single price

Before pricing Meydan against any other zone, three questions eliminate most of the list. These are the ones we ask in the first thirty seconds of a call.

1. Who do you invoice, UAE customers or overseas customers? If UAE mainland customers are going to be your main revenue, a free zone is the wrong starting question and you should be pricing a mainland licence.
2. Do physical goods enter the UAE? If they do, you are in a conversation about designated zones and warehousing, and JAFZA company setup cost or DAFZA setup cost is the comparison, not this one.
3. How many visas do you need in the next eighteen months? One to three and the flexi-desk model holds comfortably. More than six and you are into the shared office from the start, so price that in rather than discovering it in month nine. At that headcount IFZA licence cost is the other side worth pricing.

Overseas or UAE-based customers, no goods crossing the border, one to three visas: that is the profile Meydan is built for, and the bands above are the ones that apply. If your answers point elsewhere, DMCC company setup cost and our comparison of DAFZA, DMCC, IFZA and Meydan price the alternatives, and the cost of starting a business in Dubaiwidens it further.

What to budget, and when

Three numbers carry most of the arithmetic here. A one-visa Meydan company costs AED 24,000 to AED 28,000 in year one, AED 16,700 to AED 21,000 in year two, and roughly AED 5,500 to AED 6,500 more in year three when the visas recycle.

The advertised AED 12,500 is real, and it is the licence only, with no visa. Whether that is the right product for you depends entirely on whether you already hold UAE residence. Four in five of the people reading this do not, which is why the first-year figure is roughly double the one in the advert.

And the line to watch is not the licence. It is the audit, because it arrives in month eleven of a year you budgeted at incorporation, and the renewal does not complete without it.

When you want the arithmetic run against your own file rather than a package, our free zone licence service covers Meydan and the alternatives, and we will tell you if another zone fits better before quoting anything. The full picture on the zone is in Meydan Free Zone business setup , the orientation piece is what Meydan Free Zone is, and the done-for-you route is Meydan setup services.